How We Can All Make A Difference On University Mental Health & Wellbeing Day

It seems like almost every day is an awareness day for something or other. There are a handful of awareness days, weeks, and months that get global attention and raise funds for vital causes. But then there are more obscure awareness days, not necessarily any less vital, perhaps, yet not quite managing to gain the same attention. There is, apparently, a National Pig Day, a Potato Awareness Week, and even a National Toilet Tank Repair Month - which, coincidentally, falls in the same month as National Pickled Peppers Month.

So it was with some trepidation that the idea of a University Mental Health & Wellbeing Day was put to me. Would it get lost in a sea of awareness days? Would the creation of yet another awareness day cause eyes to roll? I was unsure. But after thinking about it, I realised that an awareness day isn't just about trying to squeeze a date into the diaries of those who would otherwise be uninterested. It's also about aggregating the resources of those who are already involved with a cause - to get stuff done.

There are many people with an interest in university mental health; including university support staff, student unions, charities, and a growing number of student campaigners. But it's hard to unite everyone. The issues are complex, and we have our own narrow remits and institutional issues to deal with. This is where University Mental Health & Wellbeing Day comes in. For one day of the year we can try and take a step back from the individual problems we're working on, focus our resources on addressing the issues that exist across institutions, and know that there are others, all around the UK, who will be doing exactly the same.

The most comprehensive guidance paper for university mental health is the Royal College of Psychiatrists'2011 report, which outlines a series of recommendations for how universities can improve the mental health of their members. In its recommendations, there is one that stands out for being relatively straightforward and achievable, and it's this in particular that, in 2013, campaigners have an opportunity to push for. The recommendation reads as follows:

"It is recommended that all higher education institutions have a formal mental health policy. This should ensure that they meet statutory obligations under disability legislation. It should also cover areas such as health promotion, the provision of advice and counselling services, student support and mentoring, and special arrangements for examinations (Universities UK/GuildHE Working Group for the Promotion of Mental Well-Being in Higher Education, 2006)."

At its most basic, a mental health policy represents an institution's commitment to supporting the mental health of its members. With it, staff and students can be familiar with the rights and opportunities offered to them, they can hold the institution accountable to its policy, and they can seek improvements to it when they deem it necessary. But it's more than this. It provides a shared starting point from which the institution and its members can collectively identify and explore broader issues that go beyond the scope of the institution, such as cultural and political factors affecting the Higher Education sector at large.

For the policy to be meaningful it needs to be actively monitored, and reviewed and updated to reflect the needs of students and staff, as well as ongoing changes that affect universities. This is why each university should be encouraged to make their mental health policy publicly available through their website.

In December I wrote an article asking, 'whose responsibility is student mental health?' There was no easy answer to it. But on University Mental Health & Wellbeing Day, there is something we can all do. We can give our support to the range of activities taking place. We can champion great work by students, staff, and institutions. And we can push for each institution to have in place a formal, up to date, and publicly available mental health policy. It might not fix everything, but it's a start.

Visit here to sign a petition urging the CEO of Universities UK - the representative body for 134 institutions - to encourage and support all of its member institutions in developing a mental health policy.